


Like Drinking Salted Water

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Character Study, Episode Related, F/M, First Kiss, Kissing, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 01:50:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4416440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Kissing is like drinking salted water. You drink, and your thirst increases."</i> The scene at Café Réplique, and the kiss, from Jack's perspective. Set during 1x07, "Murder in Montparnasse."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Drinking Salted Water

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: “Jack’s thoughts just before, during, and immediately after the kiss in ‘Murder in Montparnesse’. For [InALessLethalDress](http://archiveofourown.org/users/InALessLethalDress/pseuds/InALessLethalDress), who was kind enough to give me a prompt when I pestered her. ♥

  
_Kissing is like drinking salted water. You drink, and your thirst increases. – Chinese Proverb_  


Jack understood the terrible power of memories. It was one of the reasons he had studiously avoided most of the French restaurants in Melbourne since 1918. He had nothing against the French people, their culture, or their food, but the very smell of soupe à l'oignon brought him crashing back to his brief furloughs in nameless small villages, where his mates had drunk and sang and he had hunkered down in a corner to eat food that was not army-issue, and all through the crowded inns had hummed the red-hot wired tension of tattered men waiting and dreading their next order. 

As he sat in Café Réplique and discreetly surveyed the arrangement of the diners, out of the corner of his eye he watched Miss Fisher fidgeting nervously with yellowed old photograph, waiting with the same brittle anticipation of a soldier consumed with the dread of battle. Her normally flawlessly made-up face was pale without powder, and her swollen, blotchy eyes told of many sleepless nights. She was terrified… but she was here. Not for the first time, Jack felt a surge of respect for her. She was interfering, annoying, bull-headed, and quite possibly a menace to society… but sometimes he couldn’t help but admire Phryne Fisher.

The proprietor of the café, who was doing his best to maintain an atmosphere of normalcy with his establishment full of undercover police officers, placed a steaming dish on the table in front of Jack. “Et pour Monsieur, escargots avec garlic butter. Bon appétit.” 

Jack stared at his plate in dismay. Well, it wasn’t onion soup…

“To think I managed to avoid snails the entire time I was posted in France.” He thought he saw a tiny flicker of amusement in Miss Fisher’s eyes, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared. Never a man to turn down free food, and needing something to occupy his hands, Jack extricated a snail from its shell and chewed it bravely. “Mm. Not bad. Like buttered pieces of India rubber.” The sudden violent _bang_ of a popping champagne cork made Miss Fisher jump like a shell-shocked war vet, as in a way, Jack was coming to realize, she very much was. “The room is full of police,” he told her, letting his voice slid into the soft, warm register he used when calming distraught witnesses. He ventured to lay his hand over hers, by way of reassurance. “You couldn't be more safe.” 

She looked at him bleakly and reached for her water glass. Jack pretended to return his attention to his snails, but strange to say, he found he had lost his appetite.

“Just what we need,” Phryne said, looking past him.

Her tight, worried tone made Jack follow her gaze, and he saw her red ragger drivers Bert and Cec walking slowly past Hector Chambers’s table. The intent on Bert’s face was all too plain.

“Who invited the comrades?” 

“They must have followed us. They're going to ruin everything,” she muttered, beginning to rise from her chair with the intent of bolting.

“Phryne, _no_.” He stood and grabbed her arm gently. The action caught her by surprise and he almost expected her to pull away, to insist on doing this her way, but he kept talking, calmly and steadily, and didn’t give her the chance. “Dubois could be here any minute. Here, sit here.” He maneuvered her into his chair, which was at right angles to the café door, and took hers which faced the door head-on. “I'll keep an eye out for him.” 

Miss Fisher seemed unable to relinquish her vigil over the door. She turned her head compulsively at every newcomer and slight sound, to watch. 

“I don't feel I have your full attention, Miss Fisher,” Jack chided. She shot him a tired but otherwise unreadable look, but obediently trained her eyes on the opposite wall.

At that moment, Jack’s attention was caught by the lean, foreign-looking man easing his way into the café with all the studied casualness of a seasoned predator. Every hair on the back of Jack’s neck suddenly went up, and without knowing why, he had the instinct, born of years of war and police raids, to reach for his pistol. It was René Dubois. It had to be. Jack had never had the inexplicable urge to kill anyone, not even when he had been face to face with a German officer prepared to bayonet him through the heart, more than he did in that brief blood-chilling moment in Café Réplique.

As if picking up on his thoughts, or perhaps simply following his line of sight, Phryne began to glance at the door, then to turn her head.

“Eyes front,” Jack murmured intently. “Phryne.” It was no good; she had seen Dubois, and if Jack didn’t do something quickly, Dubois would see _her_ , and everything would be finished. “ _Phryne._ ” 

In that place, in that situation, there was only one thing Jack could do, and he did it without thinking. As naturally and smoothly as drawing a breath, he leaned across the table, clasped the side of her head in his big hand, turned her to face him and kissed her passionately.

He felt her surprise at the sudden embrace, but either she understood the need for the hasty action or else she was too done in to care. She acquiesced to the deception, and the touch of her startled lips against his brought a flood of memories rolling through Jack’s mind, without mercy, none of them distinct, all of them warm, dark, desperate, divine, things that he was certain he had experienced sometime but couldn’t remember when. It had been years since he had held or kissed anyone, and without meaning to he poured every ounce of frustrated loneliness into keeping Phryne’s mouth against his, for as long as possible. His free hand came round against her back and he pulled her closer. She moved with him, perfectly, like water.

And emblazoned through it all, like a flare rising from the battlefield and them exploding into a burst of incandescent beauty, was a line from a American novel that Phryne had left in his office, and that he had decided to read before returning to her care: ‘He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her.’

 _Then he kissed her… Then he kissed her…_

Their lips parted slowly, the lingering touch of Phryne’s breath following him, and before the deafening flood waters rolled back, Jack knew he was lost. He would spend the rest of his life wanting to kiss her. 

His eyelids fluttered open and he saw her through a haze, and it seemed to him that Phryne, pale, regarding him with deep, quiet eyes, was seeing him for the first time, too. 

Jack’s skin crackled at the danger in the room. Slowly, he moved his head just enough to peer through Phryne’s feather boa and make eye contact with Collins. The boy, although startled by the display of apparent intimacy he had just witnessed, had managed to keep his head, and he gave Jack a slight nod.

Dubois reached behind the maître d's desk and lifted a wrapped canvas from the floor. He waved the waiter away and prepared to carry the painting to the table where Chambers was sitting.

Phryne tensed painfully in Jack’s arms. Without dislodging his hands, and keeping her black feather boa over her face, she slowly twisted her head round to peer at the man. Her fear was palpable, and Jack felt his blood run hot and cold by turns at the thought of it. He had no clear idea of what she had suffered at that Frenchman’s hands, but anyone who could make Phryne Fisher that badly frightened was not someone Jack wanted walking freely on his streets. 

Dubois sank into a chair, as Hugh rose from his table and made his way casually to the front desk. At that moment, just as Phryne was locking her eyes on Dubois, Bert and Cec came up to flank him. 

_Hell_ , Jack thought.

Bert grabbed the sitting Dubois by the shoulder. “Long time no see,” he snarled. “This is from Thommo and Ronnie.” He hauled back and slugged Dubois in the jaw.

Jack and Phryne were on their feet in an instant.“Bert, no!” Phryne called, turning over her chair in her haste to stand.

“Police!” Jack shouted, pistol in hand. “Out of the way!” 

In the next five seconds, everything seemed to happen. Dubois, flat on his back, pulled a pistol from his belt. Phryne, squirming her way through the crowd towards Bert. Dubois suddenly on his feet again, with Phryne in a headlock and the mouth of his pistol pressed to her temple.

“My Phryne,” Dubois purred disdainfully, his lips against her ear and his eyes trained on Jack’s gun. “It has been too long, no?” He began to work his way backwards, towards the door, using Phryne as a shield. His nerves screeching in rage, Jack struggled to keep calm, to keep the gun moving, always locked on Dubois’s head. But his head was so close to Phryne’s… 

They reached the door and when Dubois reached for the knob, Phryne made a move for the gun. At any other time, Jack knew, he _knew_ , she would have had it. But she was too bloody frightened and her reflexes were shot. He was faced with the god-awful sight of Phryne Fisher with a pistol muzzle digging into her throat.

Dubois pressed his face to Phryne’s, as though to kiss her. His eyes seemed to possess her. “Drop it, monsieur.” 

Jack looked at Phryne and felt as though the world had fallen out from beneath him. He tossed his gun at Dubois’s feet. 

The Frenchman began to turn slowly, to make his way out, but as he did so, his grip on Phryne must have loosened, just enough. _Attagirl, Phryne,_ Jack thought, charging. He hit Dubois in the shoulder, driving him against the far wall. But there was power in the rangy man and he threw Jack back and onto the floor.

“Stay back, Jack!” Phryne cried, with his pistol in Dubois’s face. Jack kept his eyes on her as he slowly regained his feet. She looked utterly terrified and utterly in control, and he had no doubt that if Dubois made one wrong move, then that face would soon be gone.

Dubois, though, was possessed either of supreme confidence, or insanity. It amounted to either, in Jack’s opinion, for he took a slow step forward until the mouth of the pistol was pressed flush between his eyes. “You would not shoot me,” he said, his voice low and gruff and strangely compelling in its certainty.

Phryne’s eyes were locked with his. Slowly, she began to lower the pistol, and Jack’s stomach turned over… But it was only to press the gun firmly against René Dubois’s heart, and chamber a bullet with a sound like bones cracking. “I'm not afraid of you,” she said, her voice gone soft with hatred. There were tears in her eyes, tears for the friends she had lost, for Bert’s friends, for whatever else Dubois had taken from her, and Jack had never admired or respected her more. 

Her defiance was Dubois’s breaking point. With an expression very like fear, he kissed his hand to Phryne, spun round and broke for the door.

He was met by Véronique Sarcelle, and one of Anatole’s kitchen knives in his chest. Phryne walked to Dubois’s side and slowly dropped into a crouch, to witness the final few seconds of his life.

Jack knelt beside her. “You all right?” he whispered, calm without but shaking inside, and from more than just the momentary fear slinking away to leave him cold.

Phryne lifted her eyes from the body, eyes that brimmed with tears and emotions that Jack could not begin to fathom. “I believe I am.” The tremor in her voice spoke of stories that had taken far too long to end.

He looked at her for a moment or two, wanting to hold her, heart bleeding for her, and then reached for her hand. She gripped it hard, almost painfully, and the tears spilled down her face without a sound, dampening her cheeks and lips. He could almost taste them.

**Author's Note:**

> The quote running through Jack's head is from "The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald.


End file.
